WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy last year to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sex assault and rape allegations. He fears that Sweden will agree to extradite him to the United States. On Tuesday, Ecuador’s foreign minister accused the British government of trampling on Assange’s rights by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political...

Legendary author, poet and activist Alice Walker joins us to discuss her newest book, "The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way," in which she discusses many of the dominant themes in her life and work, including racism, Palestine, Africa and Obama’s presidency. The collection of essays explores Walker’s conflicting desire for deep engagement in the world...

In part two of our conversation, Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir talks about why she decided to come to the United States at a time when a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, is investigating WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer, also talks about her support for whistleblower Bradley Manning and other cyber-activists. We also talk about Iceland’s response to the banking crisis. [includes...

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has just published "the Kissinger Cables," 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents from 1973 to 1976 that include many once-secret memos written by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. While the documents have been available to the public at the National Archives, WikiLeaks has created a searchable online database to allow anyone in the world to quickly search them. WikiLeaks...

Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir played a critical role in WikiLeaks’ release of the "Collateral Murder" video, which showed a U.S. military helicopter in July 2007 as it killed 12 people and wounded two children in Iraq. Jónsdóttir joins us on her first trip to the United States since a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, began its investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. She also discusses her role...

A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers. It is a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed death squads in Central America during the 1980s to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning. We play extended excerpts of "James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq," which exposes the role the retired U.S. colonel James...

A leaked audio recording has emerged of the statement Army whistleblower Bradley Manning delivered at his pretrial hearing in military court late last month. Manning acknowledged he gave hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and...

To discuss Bradley Manning’s recorded court statement that was recently leaked to the press, we’re joined by perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. "What we’ve heard are people like The New York Times who have consistently slandered him ... that he was vague and couldn’t think of...

As we broadcast from the Freedom to Connect conference, we look at one whistleblower who used the Internet to reveal the horrors of war: U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning. Military prosecutors have decided to bring the maximum charges against Manning after he admitted during a pretrial hearing last week to the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history. In a bid to secure a reduced sentence, Manning acknowledged on the stand that he gave...

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